


Shadowbox - Empty Chairs And Empty Coffins

by SomberCitizen



Series: Boxes [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:38:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomberCitizen/pseuds/SomberCitizen





	Shadowbox - Empty Chairs And Empty Coffins

There’s a low fog out tonight, painting the night grey. The fiery oranges and yellows of the fall, look so dim and dull under the veil. The tops of the trees are swaying, bare boned and looking frail, ready to snap under the howling wind. But the rose bush stands still. I can see the carmine blooms, like lidless eyes staring at me from across the field, and it would send chills down my spine, if chills were still something I could feel. 

 

I don’t know why I’m stalling. I circled around at least twice now. There is a part of me that was buried here. Perhaps I just wish it was, something the fill the empty coffin. There’s a peculiar type of ache that comes with being dead, but the one that came with  _ her  _ is different. It’s the one that keeps me wandering in the small hours. The one that burns where her hands once were. The one that after a dream makes me feel headless and boneless, like her smile did. That knowing smirk that lit her face and chased the clouds away when it was overcast and foggy. But tonight the fog’s not moving.

 

I’m still stalling. Every step forwards eats away at my nerves, until I reach the corner of the field, where the rose bush grows. I remember when I saw it first in Hubei, and all I could think about was  _ her.  _ Smuggled a cutting across the border and cared for it until there was no reason to anymore. Left it to die in the corner, but it refused to do so. It grew, in spite of me, it grew and blossomed beautiful, that bastard. It wasn’t meant to bloom without her. They told me it would help to have something to care for again, so I left it here for her. She always did love roses.

 

We met on such a chance. I didn’t know I’d fall so far, it came at me like a sucker punch. I wish I would’ve known. I wish I would’ve told her sooner. I wish for many things these days. They would chuck it to nostalgia, but it’s that ache that makes me wish. Sometimes I wish I’d died under the rubble. What am I now? A shadow. I’d been a shadow ever since she’d died. Haunting hallways and battlefields. What else is there left for me? Nothing feels or tastes good, nothing sounds as good. The memory of her is like briars, twisting around my neck, spilling crimson, like the roses. 

 

We could’ve had a happy ending. A year or two more, and then we could’ve left, gone somewhere they couldn’t find us and have that family we spoke of on foggy nights like these, when we were reminded of the chemicals in our bodies and all we could do was sleep the pains away. It should’ve never been her there, it should’ve been someone else. Anyone, I would’ve traded them all for one more day. Or at least an hour, enough to say a brief goodbye. Anything would’ve been better than the way it happened. It caught me like a sucker punch again, that left me feeling headless in a different way. That different kind of ache. That empty feeling that cuts away at whatever is left of me. Nothing but failed ambitions and lost love..

 

I still think it’s her when I hear the clicks of a keyboard or the smell of coffee’s in the air. Even such mundane things have become reminders of what could have been. Sometimes I wish I would forget it all, her smile, the touch of her skin, the way she liked her coffee.. Sometimes I hate myself for wishing so. They used to tell me, right after it happened, that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but what the fuck do they know. Who the fuck had they lost? Not her. Not like I did. Fuck them and their cliches. 

  
  
  


No one knows what lies under this field. I can’t leave much here. A small statue of the egyptian goddess that gave her her name, Bastet, by the roots of the roses. A velvet pouch full of coffee, the blend that she liked and woke her every morning, and a chess piece - the queen, well loved and worn mahogany. The set is ruined now, but I can’t play anymore anyway. What is a king without his queen, but lost?

 

Dawn is breaking soon. I was stalling before, but now I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with your memory. I want to ache no other pain, but yours. I want all those reminders, what else is there left of you for me? I can hear the town waking up in the distance and I know I have to leave. The wind has come down to the ground and the fog is clearing. I can’t let them see me without the mask. I can’t let them, anyone, see me with dried tears. I’m sorry for what I became. I know you’d hate me like this, but the reckoning is coming. I have to be him. They have to pay the price. Maybe it is just another failed ambition in the making, but I have to leave. Goodbye, Gatita, I’ll come again soon. Maybe we’ll see each other someday on the other side. 

 

I walk away, trying not to linger, thought it is tempting to do just so. To let myself be swallowed by her memory and ache. There are four crows, on the three above the roses, must’ve flown here while I wasn’t looking. How did that old nursery rhyme go?

 

_ One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl.. Four for a boy.  _


End file.
